A Toast to the East Coast

Washington D.C.

Air and Space Museum
I decided to let Sam write this section since he spent all freakin' day there. . . P.S. This is the REAL Space Ship One - not that phony one they've got on display at the Boeing History of Flight museum in Seattle.

Okay, apparently that's all Sam had to say after 6 hours in this museum.

One of the new things I enjoyed about the Air and Space Museum this time was an entire room they had dedicated towards the Wright brother. I think the thing that fascinated me about this was they were not engineer or scientists by training and yet they solved a very complex problem that nobody else had been successful at. They used what they knew about bikes (being bike mechanics) and used many of the same dynamic principles to design their airplane. It was also cool seeing some of the models and force diagrams they drafted up to help them solve the problem. Very cool.

The space side is always amazing as well. There was a video that explained how world events and politics built up into a race to space. It's amazing what can result from competition - and I can't help but wonder if we ever would have made it to the moon without it.





Museum of Natural History
Lions and tigers and elephants, oh my! Golly, did this museum have a lot of stuff(ing). We spent most of our time looking at all of the mammals, which I found a little strange since it's only slightly more exotic than my grandfather's "dead zoo". My mom and I also spent some time in the dinosaurs section - I find those huge animals so exotic and so removed from anything I've ever known. We also spent a bit of time checking out the gems - all kinds of glittering jewelry! We even got to see the Hope Diamond, which was actually smaller than I had expected. My favorite part, however, was a room they had with photography of nature. There was one particular picture that grabbed my attention - it was a grizzly bear named Toby that had a bee inspecting his nose. The part that made the picture was the attitude the bear expressed pouting over his annoyance. Here's the link to many of the pictures in the gallery (including Toby): http://www.naturesbestphotography.com/pages/gallery_2007.html


American Art Museum
Our time here was short and sweet. We stopped in only to grab a bite to eat, but much to our surprise (and pleasure), my dad thought we should check things out while we were here. We basically got to look through some of the paintings and sculptures for about 20 minutes, and I think that was enough culture for my dad for the day, so we left.






Tour of the Capitol
We had a tour of the capitol, which I have to admit I was a bit disappointed in. Probably about half our time was spent getting our tour group through security, then once we were inside we only got to see two rooms. That said, it is a VERY pretty building though with some amazing architecture.




The Memorials

Walking to the memorials took up two evenings - both of them freezing. We got to see the Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Vietnam, WWII, and FDR memorials by snowlight. Seeing the memorials at night is certainly a bit different than the day. It seems to make me reflect more inwardly and meditate on our history's past and future.

The Jefferson, FDR, and WWII memorials were all new for me, and I'm very glad we took the chance to visit these. The WWII memorial was very beautiful with fountains and waterfalls. In the Jefferson Memorial, I found the inscriptions thought provoking and inspiring(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Memorial). Last was the FDR Memorial, which had such a different tone than any of the other majestic and powerful memorials - it was very dark, cold, and extended. I guess you'd have to experience to understand what that just meant.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum was one of the more interesting and moving memorials we went to. I thought it was amazing how one man came to power so quickly. The museum takes you through the rise of Hitler and explains the different tactics he used to suppress others. I think the part that will probably never leave my mind was the room filled with shoes of Holocaust victims. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a girl, and girls love shoes - but for some reason that visual really brought it home for me. I had to walk through that room quickly, or the tears probably would have started running.

We also walked by the White House on our first night there - but no George W. sightings.


Hard Rock Cafe
It's a hard life - but somebody's got to live it. We ended one of our chilly evening walks with dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. We jammed to the music, watched crazy 80's videos, and warmed our bellies with food.

The Monocle
I couldn't go without mentioning our dinner at the Monocle. Here we were at a nice, classy dinner, and it took me less than 5 minutes to spill my martini all over the nice linen table cloth. Go me!

Philly

The Liberty Bell
We took the train to NYC, but decided to stop in Philadelphia for a night on our way north. Since we were there, of course we had to go and see the Liberty Bell (which I keep spelling Liverty, darn fingers).

One of the bits of information I learned was how the town really took to heart the meaning of this bell. The people cherished this bell so much that they used every bit of excess material used to make (and mend) the bell to create artifacts they could have in their household.

Independence Hall
Oh, excuse me, this is the Pennsylvania State House. Whatever - this is where the Declaration of Independence AND the Constitution were signed. Major stuff when down in this place!

This was only about a 30 minute tour, but it was good! It basically was a quick and concise history of the U.S. - a good refresher course for those of us no longer in grade school.

New York City

Empire State Building
$20 / person and about 40 minutes of standing in line before we got to take this picture. But golly, was it worth it! There was 25 miles of visibility on this crisp fall day!!! By the time we got to the top, it was mid-day and the lighting was amazing across the landscape of buildings.






Tiffany & Co

Must more be said? You can look (from the street), but you cannot touch.









The Status of Liberty and Ellis Island
Our visit to New York was kind of a whirl wind so we only got to see these sights from the shores of Battery Park. By the way, if you want to know how the park got it's name, check out wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park).

Over in this area we also got to see the Bull of Wall Street, The New York Stock Exchange, and Ground Zero. Ground Zero is still very much a large hole in the ground, but they are very busy working on recreating the structure and the subway is running underneath it again. One cool thing that they did is they set up walls that list all of the heroes of 9/11. That nearly got my tears going as well.



WICKED
Both my mom and I really wanted to see Wicked on Broadway, but we heard they were already sold out. We decided to stop by the box office at the theater anyway just in case, and sure enough somebody had turned in their tickets. They turned out to be great seats. The play was simply fantastic! The story was fun, the props were great, and the music was amazing. In short, it was wicked (sorry, couldn't help myself).



Metropolitan Museum of Art
Sam and I literally spent half a day in here. We got to see Egyptian artifacts dating back to 1300 BC. We also spent a lot of time in the armor and weapons. There was also a case of broaches which I swear looked more like door knockers - not sure what they were thinking back in the day. We also spent a good amount of time looking at the European paintings and sculptures. My absolute favorite part though was getting to see the Monet and Van Gogh. . .sigh.


We topped it all of with a cherry by sitting on the Mezzanine, sipping martinis and wine, and listening to a string quartet. Does it really get better than that?


Rockefeller Center
On our way back from the MET we strolled down 5th Avenue amongst all of the Christmas shoppers with our goal being the Rockefeller Center. We had intended to go ice skating there, but found people crowded around (sometimes 3 rows thick) the ice rink watching the skaters. Considering I haven't been skating in 5+ years, I decided having such an audience was NOT what I needed. It was very cool seeing the tree and all of the lights. Speaking of lights, the tree this year was very "green" in that the lights were energy efficient.

Sandwiches n' Such

It's the end of the fiscal year for HP - and what a day it was! I was in such a hurry out the door this morning that I didn't even make myself a lunch. Jenni without food - could there possibly be anything scarier on a Halloween??? As it was, I talked Sam into taking me out to lunch and the two of us meandered over to University Hero.

Being that it was the end of the fiscal year, and Halloween (which I find this coincidence a bit creepy), what a better way to celebrate than by eating a meatball sandwich? Forget that I was wearing a white as snow shirt - I was in the celebrating mood! So ordered it I did, and soon I had the delicious delicacy steaming in front of me.

It has been quite some time since I ordered a meatball sandwich - this was a much more frequent staple of my diet back in they day when Subway had something special from any other sandwich spot. Once upon a time, in a far away sandwich shop, Subway used to cut their bread differently. Instead of doing a straight cut down the side of the sandwich, they cut a long trench through the top of the bread. The cut was quite ingenious, I must admit. With this trench-like cut, it made it very conducive for meats, cheeses, and veggies to sit inside the sandwich instead of falling out. Even better for the most-highest-honorable meatball sandwich where the meat is stacked high, the veggies and cheese even higher. And what does round meat like to do, just like any other round object? Roll! Oh no, not if they are lined up in a trench.

While I understand and appreciate the speed and efficiency of creating one simple cut in a sandwich (after all, I'm an Industrial Engineer), I must say that their sandwich eating usability rating went way down in my books. Sure, they tried to buy off their bread cutting techniques by adding a variety of bread types - a change from their white and wheat options. But I'm not sold. In fact, that was about the time that I stopped visiting Subway quite as often. Yes, they lost my business due to their bad choices in cutting bread. Okay, it might have also had something to do with me becoming a poor college student only a year later. But non the less - as I proved today - I can buy a meatball sandwich anywhere now that my meatballs don't have a trench to sit in.

That said, my sandwich is long gone, and my shirt is still white as can be. So maybe a trench in my sandwich isn't as important as it might sound. Then again, I did wear a bib.

Cake Inventions

For my bridal shower, one of the gifts I received from a lady in our church was a cake saver. After the wedding, Jo kept asking me if I had started making cakes yet - and I kept hanging my head because I had not found the time. Finally, she had asked me if I would be willing to bake and decorate the cake for an upcoming bridal shower. Why not! I went over to Jo's house and she spent the evening teaching me some of the cake decorating basics. What do you know - it was quite fun. Unfortunately, I don't have that picture of this cake in digital form, but I do have pictures of the cakes I have done since then.

The new tradition for Beaver football game days is a Beaver cake! Even when the Beavs lose, at least we can look forward to going home and eating cake. :)

Birthdays are important too. Wasn't too pleased with the way this one turned out, but not bad for a quick 20 minutes before work!

And here's the grand-daddy of them all. A half sheet double cake (it was huge - but didn't last long!) that I made for the go-away party we had for our youth pastor and his family. As one of the church members put it, since they're leaving, shouldn't this be a de-ception rather than a reception? Note: The icing in this was about 7 lbs of powdered sugar. Yow!

Dumpling First

It's been months since I have sat down to write. I blame much of that on the fact that I usually find time to write on the weekend, and it's rather hard to compose online when you're camping all summer.

So here I am, 7 am on a Saturday morning. I just had my daily dose of cereal; just the recipe to perk my brain. I'm lounged back on the couch, fingers poised above the keyboard, ready to spend a nice and relaxing morning writing when I hear:
Squaaak

I look up, and there's that bird. THE bird.
Squak squak squak. . .tweat

He looks in my direction, blinks a few times as if to say "Who me?"

I don't understand how he does it. He has one leg firmly gripped to the side of the cage, and his other is stretched out in the opposite direction grasping a set of linked geometric shapes. My bird does the splits in mid air on a regular basis. Why he does this to himself, I can only guess. Maybe it's a self infliction of pain - punishment to make him feel better for all the racket he creates.

"Dumpling," I say sternly, making it clear that I'm serious. "I am trying to write over here. Could you please be quiet?"
Tweat.

"Oh Dumpling, what a sweet little sound," I exclaim in delight, encouraging the good behaviour.
Tweat-tweat-tweat. SQUAK!

He is now perched on the wooden dowel that extends across the width of his cage. He starts attacking the geometrical string that hangs from his wire ceiling. At first he just starts by pecking at it, but the moment it starts swinging too much he grabs on to it with one claw and really starts gnawing away at the plastic. He starts this in silence, but the more involved he get with the chewing, the more noise he makes. The sound is somewhere between a squeak and a squak, the decibles getting louder and stronger.

Maybe if I just ignore him, he will give up. I'll just quickly pound on the keys, as if I'm so absorbed in my writing (which happens to be all about him - but he doesn't need to know that) that I don't even notice him. Oh this is fun! Writing is fun! The keys clacking more rapidly, I must REALLY be enjoing this writing stuff.
Silence.

This is good! I must really look like I'm not paying attention. Part of me really wants to look over there, just to see if he's watching my display of delight.

No Jen, keep the eyes glued to the laptop.

But it will only be a glance.

Even if he sees the glance, the gig will be up and I'll be done.

But eyes. . .must. . .look.

I quickly snap my eyes up - only to stare back into his candy-round eyes that reflect nothing but emptyness. Sucking in air, I realize I'm caught! And he knows it too.

He blinks, arcs his neck around, and buries his beak in his butt giving it a nice firm fluffing. Scratching himself right in front of me - sheesh! No manners what-so-ever. He straightens himself up and belts out.
Squak squak squak squak squak.

"Dumpling! If you don't put a sock in it, I'll make you into a dumpling!"

I hate to bring it down to a threat, but he's taken it this far. He seems to be pondering this. Silence at first, followed by a very gentle
Tweat

Yeah, that threat usually pipes him down for a few minutes. When I really get frusterated with the bird, I like to look over and imagine him with a pot-sticker with legs. I think he knows the resemblance, and so even if it is an empty threat, I think such a notion as being plucked, boiled, and ultimately digested in pleasure could frighten even the bravest birds out there.

I lean over and lick my lips for effect. He is paralyzed.

Ahhhh, silence. Snuggling into the pillows, I relax for a minute. Comforting, yes - but now I'm not sure what to do. This is hardly sport when the bird stops fighting back.

I peer over my laptop screen to see Dumpling clinging to the side of the cage - my side of the cage. He looks at me with despiration.
Tweat tweat tweat - cooooooooo

"Dumpling, is there something you want?"

He flaps back down to the dowel, starting a warmup jog. His straw legs start getting higher and higher bringing his knees into his chest.

"Dumpling," I say getting up at last, "Could there possibly be something you want?"

This is driving him crazy! His knee-ups have now evolved into him excitedly paddeling back and forth along the dowel. Faster and faster he goes, randomly letting poop-lets drop. He poops when he gets excited - or at least how I explain it to myself whenever I end up with so many presents on my shoulder while he takes perch there.

I approach the cage, and I'm not sure his little legs could carry him any faster to-and-fro.

"Could it be that you are wanting this," I say shaking the bag that sits next to his cage.
Tweat chirp tweat chirp tweat tweat tweat

I empty the bag into his dish and the gate falls as I remove my hand. Dumpling flies over and starts madly pecking away at his breakfast.

Ah yes, gotta love the morning routine. Now that Dumpling is busy with his millet, where was I? Writing. Oh yes, writing. About what? Sigh, I seem to be at a loss of what to write about. Best go take a shower and get on with my day. Perhaps I'll find another morning to write in the near future - and just maybe I'll think to feed Dumpling first.

Girls Gone Wild II

The other weekend I had my girls over. I always have fun with my old college roommates, and it reminds me how important it is to have girlfriends in your life.

Girls Gone Wild I was hosted back in November. This event was named by Sam after he saw the pictures we took, most of which included the dozen different ways to wear my unicorn Haloween costume. The weekend also included cross-stitching while listening to OSU Football on the radio and visiting our old stomping grounds on campus and our "favorite" restaurant, Sharri's. Pizza, movies, and painting toenails were also in there somewhere (of course).

Girls Gone Wild II was much the same, but this time we didn't have any Halloween costumes to wear (although Eileen thought my salad bowl made an excellent hat). It was Mom's weekend, so we wandered around campus enjoying the free samples of food. Eileen and I wanted to participate in the mother daughter contest, but we thought the judges might have a hard time believing Eileen was my daughter. After exploring campus and picking up an issue of the Barometer, we headed over to Local Boyz for some good ol' Hawaiian food. And no, I did not steal 'da sauce. To top it off, Brother Ben came over the next morning and cooked us banana pancakes. Good food, good friends, and lots of laughs.

Building a Dock

This weekend Sam and I went down to Roseburg to help my parents build a dock. As it turns out, Ben was also passing through town and decided to stay and help. In addition, my grandparents are staying in Roseburg right now so they were also there to pitch in. With 4 guys standing around, I decided that there were enough hands to construct the dock, so I decided to spend Friday working on my parents wildly overgrown yard. With the assistance of my grandmother, I tore up (yes, literally) one very diseased bush, cut the ugliest bush you've ever seen down to stubs, and pruned a number of bushes to half their original size. It was a bit of a massacre, but after all the blood was mopped up, things looked amazingly better.

That night we loaded up the 8x12 raft frame onto my father's trailer and hauled it up to the mountain. How funny that thing looked on the trailer traveling down I-5. From a distance it resembled a hot tub, up close it just looked like a mystery. Once we got it up to the mountain, we then had to figure out how to get the darn thing into the lake. Not an easy task. I think some fairy waved her wand and *poof*, it jumped from the trailer into the water. We tied it up to the side of the lake and let it rest there, in wait for us to return the following day to finish with the decking.


The next morning we woke up to a nice rain. Swell, just what we needed to finish the raft. Being the hard core raft builders that we are, we decided to go up to the mountain anyway to finish the project. When we made it up to the mountain, it was drizzling a bit, but as we worked the clouds parted and gave us sunshine the rest of the day. While Ben and Sam finished on the decking, my father and I started on the path to lead down to the lake.

My mother had made it to the site right about the time my dad started his chain saw. She ran over to my father in horror (he got in a bit of trouble cutting down a few too many tree just the week before) to see what else he was chopping. My dad was very quick to tell her that I had approved and he was leaving alone the "brush" I had told him not to touch. I couldn't help but laugh - it was like he had the excuse waiting for her. So my mom agreed to haul the slash pile we were making in the road. A bit later my grandparents made it up. They chipped right in on the trail blazing. My grandmother was considered the expert scientist for the "granny test" to ensure the grade was steady enough for her to make it down.

Before long, "Tom and Huck" had the decking completed and they were rowing their way over to the trail. The next thing we knew, Ben was taking his shoes off and flying into the water. There were a few squawks and eeps, and he was quickly making his way back to the side of the dock. The sun might have been shining, but that water was still chilly. Unfortunately, his plan wasn't thought through because there is no ladder to the deck (yet) and considering the sides of the dock are over two feet out of water. . .yeah, you get the idea. He ended up having to swim with the raft all the way over to our newly built trail while the rest of us sat around in amusement.

The rest of the day was spent enjoying the dock. We ate lunch on the dock, feed fish off the dock, and basked in the sun. I laid on the dock for quite some time peering over the side watching the fish swim around. What a great view! The fish are getting so used to us that they even swim up right under our noses.

A hard day of work was ended just right with a trip to The Jersey Lilly for Frog Burgers - the perfect reward for the crew. Two rounds gave us twice medication for our sore muscles and twice the chance to toast our new dock.

One more project down. . .the shower house is next!

Pulling Teeth

Today I took off of work early to take Sam to the dentist. It is the day Sam has been dreading for the past several months - he was forced to part with his wisdom.

Once the appointment was finished, I took him home and sat him down with a Popular Science magazine and his pain pills. He sat there for some quite time reading various articles, mentioning now and then how he didn't think the pain pills were working. Then I looked over at him a bit later to see him blinking and just kind of glancing around the room, so I asked what was going on. He replied, "Suddenly the walls in this room got a whole lot more interesting than this magazine." Apparently the drugs do work. He's already skipping around the house again and smiling. That sure didn't take long!

Today I mentioned to my manager that I was playing "mom" since Sam was getting his wisdom teeth pulled. When Colin found this out he started to tell me about his own experience. He said he sat down in the chair, and the dentist came in - arm this size of his thighs (which gave him great confidence that he would be able to yank his teeth out). Afterwards he ended up having to call his parents to come pick him up because he was so out of it. It was also amusing to hear him tell about the pain killers they put him on that basically wiped his memory. He kept making phone calls over and over to the same people telling them the same things each time. Afterwards, he didn't believe people when they said what he had done, but later his phone bill proved that indeed he had!

My personal stories is not a pretty one. I had all fours out at once. They put me out during the surgery, so I vaguely remember my mom helping me stumble to the recovery room. I came out with very black and blue puffy cheeks - quite lovely. If pictures ever surface of that day, I'll hunt down my mom's drip torch. The rest of the day I spent on the couch drooling on myself. A week later my boyfriend at the time asked me when the swelling would go down - yeah, that relationship is over.

Why are stories of pulling teeth so much fun?

Spring is here

Today is the big day - it is now officially spring! That said, I think it was barely 40 degrees when I briskly walked to work this morning. I also made sure to put my coat on this evening as I took a walk with Sam in the sun. It may be March 21, but my bum is still cold when I meander around town.

Now that it's spring, I'm getting awfully anxious to start planting away. Our townhouse has a lovely second story veranda that gets a lot of afternoon sun. Sam has taken on his first woodworking project of making planter boxes. The boxes are made of a beautiful red cedar, and I know whatever I plant in them will look good just because its container is so darn cool. We had decided to stain the woodwork in hopes to keep the quality, so Sam went out and bought a spray-on bottle.

So here I was on Saturday, St. Patty's day of all days, out back with the spray can and the smallest of the three planter boxes. Now you can imagine the excitement I had - this was the final step to the planter boxes, and just think, perhaps by the end of the night they could be full of dirt and flowers! So I drew my trusty spray can and let 'er have it. The only thing was, the stain was not clear, nor was it a pleasant brown, but instead it was about as Irish green as you can get! Oh my disappointment. I thought perhaps the green would go away after it dried. It's 5 days later, and let me tell you, it's no beautiful cedar red.

Moral of the story: Don't stain on holidays.
2nd Moral of the story: Let you spouse finish their own projects. :)

Morals aside, I'm glad spring is here.

Crying over books

When I was a teenager, I hardly remember crying. Sure, I would cry if I got hurt very bad (which was practically NEVER), but other than that my tear duct saw little action. I even recall my friend Devon telling me I was heartless when we would walk out of a movie theater together with her face all wet and soggy and mine was dry as can be. When it came to movies or books, I hardly ever cried. And then one day it happened, I became a woman.

It happened at about the age of 22 for me. I would watch movies with friends, and since it's totally socially unacceptable to cry in our society, I would force the tears back. One thing I've learned in the past few years is you can try and suck those tears back in, but they have this way of sneaking over the tear threshold, they just kind of overflow your eyes and gravity takes over from there. Down they go.

Last night I was reminded of this. I was finishing the book, "The Five People You Meet In Heaven". It's not really that the book is incredibly sad, it just hit a nerve in my body and moved my spirit - the one that likes to cry. And then the tears came. Poor Sammy, sleeping beside me, was rather startled to wake up to a sobbing wife. What was I crying about? I couldn't even explain it - I was just crying. The only good explination is that I'm a woman, and it's what we have to do every now and then.

I used to be ashamed to cry. While I prefer now not to cry in front of a group of people, I've learned that I can cry in front of some. People still love me, even if I cry - and I love them in return for that. We just have to remember, it's just another way to express emotion.

Technology, Technology - Everywhere!

Technology is fun. I got on this blog because I like to write, but thus far I have spent much more time tinkering with the settings than actually forming sentences. What can I say, technology is my life. I spend my days with databases, spreadsheets, and flow charts - and I love my job. Then I open up this and - Wow-wee - this is cool stuff. So much to play with. So much to do! Must go explore more of the capabilities and enjoy the "technology high". I'll return, I promise.

Attempt #2

Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a girl who wrote in a blog. True, she only wrote in this blog about 5 times, but never the less she put some thought into it. A rather sad attempt, if you ask me.

Then this little girl grew up, got married, and lost her blog (not to mention her old name). In attempt to gain back an identity and to fight back for her blogging honor (whatever that is), she created a new blog. How special.

So this girl-woman-thing is BACK once again.

The End (Or should I say, "Just the Beginning"?)